Sleeper trains are held back by flying getting subsidised heavily by not having kerosene taxed, and national governments giving airports effectively unlimited room to grow; happily externalising the environmental cost. Why take a train if you can fly for a fraction of the cost?

Trains in general are held back by governments not investing in rail infrastructure, because the pork barrel of another motorway link is so hard to resist (and we're not properly maintaining these either).

Sleeper trains are held back, because cross-boundary collaboration between the various semi-national rail companies is tough (for Europe).

Sleeper trains are held back, because there is a lack of modern rolling stock. Not completely new concepts; just up-to-date sleeper wagons (the ÖBB has the leading edge here now with their new wagons).

There is room for improvement in the wagon designs, but it is almost irrelevant in the face of the other challenges.

How do you plan to handle groups or families with this system? Having larger compartments gives a lot of flexibility and allows families or groups to travel together easily and spend the time with each other. The hotel pods look like they only go up to two people in size, and the seats are very isolated from each other, not even allowing people to sit next to each other as far as I can see.

I'm excited to see more work being done to improve night train travel though!

Hi! What's your perspective on the shortage of manufacturing capacity for night train rolling stock? Last I heard ÖBB can't build them fast enough for demand, and few other companies are able to actually produce these? Are you planning to build your own industrial manufacturing capability for this? And what about 2nd level suppliers?

I gotta say I love this? Are you in contact at all with the folks advocating for more night trains across the EU https://back-on-track.eu/ ? Seems like it could be pretty mission aligned.

Btw I run a weekly newsletter about urbanism and while your trains may not be exactly related I think it's cool enough that we'll feature it in the upcoming week! https://urbanismnow.substack.com/

Really cool concept. I wish we could have something like this in the US one day.

Wanted to report a small typo, In the 3D model index menu, "Uppder" can be found. I assume this was supposed to read "Upper", as in "above".

I hope to one day ride such a system when I visit europe, best of luck with your project.

Great work so far, but I note you are looking at a custom double-decker railcar with what looks like a very large loading gauge. My understanding is that for most of Europe, double deckers are not used due to loading gauge limits imposed by tunnels, bridges and so on. I presume your planned routes take that into account? Is that one of the reasons your mocked journey planner app doesn’t include the UK?

When traveling I often consider trains, and especially overnight trains. It's by far the most comfortable way to travel. Innovation in this space is a good thing.

While I'm aware that feature creepy is the enemy here, I would suggest a way to "combine " two pods for those traveling as a couple. If I'm traveling with my wife we don't want to be in "separate pods".

A retractable "wall" between 2 pods would be fine. It doesn't have to be elaborate, but you wanna point to something outside and say 'look at that' etc.

I sometimes her proposals like that, and it sounds kind of attractive - you get into your pod and forget everything until you arrive.

But in a sense, night trains are already like that. Since they can stop at multiple places, you can depart and arrive downtown. In the meantime you’re in your cabin and forget everything.

Entering the train „with“ the pod instead of just yourself is gonna make boarding and alighting take forever, and the logistics of storing and moving the pods are a nightmare. It’s going to reduce capacity by a lot because you cannot optimize the layout and every pod needs to be „insertable“ as a whole. (3x reduction in capacity means 3x increase in ticket cost).

Homologation is going to be a nightmare - in Europe, realistically, it’s gonna take more than 10 years or develop something like that. You need a new infrastructure because right now stations are for people - that’ll probably take 20 years (in Europe).

the bed looks way more comfortable in this than luna rail

ÖBB Mini cabins

  * night only
  * 40 pods per car
  * implemented

  * day and night
  * 65 pods or 40 single rooms
  * in physical since 2023
  * team focused on technical development and testing 

  * day and night
  * virtual concept
  * team very strong on marketing

My experience on the Caledonian sleeper, in a 'room' was quite cramped in all senses (I am over 6 feet tall), and quite expensive aswell. If that had been optimized better, I would have enjoyed it more.

Clearly different markets have quite different requirements and comparisons to air travel.

For example a "night train" maxes out around 12 hours. A train from 6pm to 6am is functionally equivalent to a 8pm flight, arriving at midnight, checking into a hotel, getting some sleep etc.

How far you can go in that 12 hours (give or take) depends on the speed of the train etc. In Europe you can go to a lot of places in 12 hours. In the US not so much.

Much longer and other factors come into play. You have to balance the time cost of "getting there" to the time benefit of "being there".

But thats OK. This solution doesn't have to work everywhere. It can start where it works well and grows from there.

You yourself mention the trade off — the „sardine class“ is a six-people per cabin couchette (60 ppl per railcar). The private class is luxury (10-17 cabins per railcar).

We got 65 private pods or close to 40 little single cabins - in a refurbished railcar. In a new car it would be more.

We put together some explanation of the economics and the difference between old and new cars: https://luna-rail.com/approach

Thanks!

Where do you see the carbon intensity? I just see a plane above a train with a single "250g" figure.

15g/km is very low. The number is dominated by energy mix and infrastructure. Deutsche Bahn publishes lower number, but they only look at operation (not infrastructure), and assume „green energy“ rather than the energy mix of the country.

The 15g is a good estimate, see discussion here: https://back-on-track.eu/de/klimawirkung-von-nachtzuegen-neu...